Artik (2019)
2/10
Underwhelming and barely watchable effort
18 September 2019
Living in a dysfunctional family, a teen obsessed with comic books being raised with a family of other psychos finds a connection in a stranger who arrives in town looking for help with his addiction problems, and that friendship soon puts them all in danger from the killer.

Overall, there wasn't a whole lot to like here. About the only really interesting segment here is the finale where it builds up some interesting moments featuring the final resolution of the payoff. With all the build-up featured here for the first hour, the final half features plenty of fun as the race to get the friend out of his shackles and trying to overcome the father and wife which is exceptionally fun. The brawling around the farmhouse to get him loose, the big battle where the kids come to his aid and help the son get the friend free and the big encounters around the farm that gets brutal, bloody and quite frantic manage to really help this one a lot as the practical effects work in these scenes and the brutal activity combine together to really knock this out at this point in the film which is what's needed following all the bland build-up beforehand. That said, there are quite a few flaws to this one. The biggest issue of the film's numerous problems is that the film is entirely too cliched and predictable in its setup and overall execution. There's nothing special about the relationship between the stranger and the young kid at the center of the film where he tries to be a good influence on a person unable to change themselves for the better due to the environment he's raised in. None of this is interesting or enjoyable and results in a bland and stereotyped fight for his conscious that is uninteresting to watch and just features nothing horrific or frightening at all. The idea of what he's doing to the kid is creepy in its concept that it's all about the abuse he's been leveling on him but to think that this is attempting to exploit making for an underwhelming time. The other real problem with this one is the lack of any real purpose for what happens here. The idea of the kid being raised by a serial killer in the same town without any police investigating the incidents, no one checking in on the missing kids or what they were doing with them in the first place all just scream out as unanswered questions throughout here. All it does is simply show him being raised in an abusive environment and then bringing the friend into the situation without any reason why he's there which just makes this one that much weaker in the original story with no explanations for anything that happens. On top of the film shying away from the kill scene during each of the murders which don't show anything at all on-screen, these issues here all make this one rather underwhelming any uninteresting.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.
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